The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer

Sourcebooks Landmark, 400 pages, $16.99

Florence, Italy, is one of my favorite places. Its history, its poetry, its politics, its drama, its beauty! Florence has cried out to other authors to place their books in its heart. Santlofer also heard the cry. It takes his protagonist, Luke Perrone, an American artist and art history teacher, a while to succumb to Florence’s spell, because he has other things to do. He has come to Florence to find out more about his great-grandfather, a man who stole the Mona Lisa about a hundred years ago.

Italian Vincenzo Peruggia has settled in Paris with the love of his life, Simone, who is expecting their child. It is 1911 and Vincenzo is poor. Simone, also an artist, cannot work. Vincenzo has obtained an ill-paying position at the Louvre. One of his last tasks before he steals the Mona Lisa is to build a sneeze-box for it. I saw the modern version of that sneeze-box a few years ago in the Louvre, and it was a sad and sorry thing. We must protect our treasures from the people who would admire but also touch, deface, and diminish them.* (Stonehenge, too, has recently been imprisoned for its own protection.) 

Why did Vincenzo steal the Mona Lisa? Luke wants to know and that is why he is in Florence. Sidestepping a couple of dead bodies, he tracks down the journal belonging to his great-grandfather and begins the process of translating it. While in a small library working on his research, he meets the friendly Alex(andra) Greene. She is interested — far too interested — in his research. Luke no doubt thinks it’s his allure and suave intellectual mastery of Renaissance art history. Somewhere in there, Luke realizes he is being stalked by at least one shadowy figure. That figure turns out to be a rogue Interpol agent who wants to learn if there is an art theft ring and has decided Luke may be his best lead. The agent proves to be right: Luke may be a poor innocent, but he is a lightening rod for intrigue. Luke doesn’t even cotton to yet another shadowy figure who may be following him or one of the other people he has met in his investigation. Whatever, there are more dead bodies.

There were so many elements in Santlofer’s story I enjoyed: the setting (of course), touches reminiscent of the “Da Vinci Code” (but no true puzzles), a heist, a desperate Interpol agent, a ruthless henchman. But in the end, it didn’t quite gel for me. Luke was pretty pathetic and at times I questioned whether he really knew anything about art.**

Luke falls in love at first sight. Seriously, at first sight, because he doesn’t really get to talk to or know Alex before he is smitten. Alex takes a little longer, but not much. This sounds more like a book from the 1950s or 60s. The romance is fraught, tedious, and bereft of any intelligence.

I did love the heist, though. I mentally wept at the operatic story of Vincenzo Peruggia. Now there's a love story! Curses, you vile and venal rich people who don’t believe in sharing! 

“The Last Mona Lisa” was worth the read for the description (eventually) of Florence and its art and the heist. 

*That’s why we can’t have nice things.

**At one point, a police artist is doing a rendering using Luke’s description. “That’s him. How did you do that?” Luke asks. Um. He’s an artist. You’re an artist. Did you really need to ask that?